The present invention generally relates to the field of electronic social networking systems, and more particularly, to integrating content posted by a user in a third-party application within a social networking system.
Many users of a social networking system, such as FACEBOOK, also have an account on a third-party application, such as TWITTER, FOURSQUARE, PINTEREST, or FLICKR. In many cases, such users “follow” another user on the third-party application (i.e., have registered an interest in content or activity of the other user), where the other user also has an account on the social networking system but is not a direct social connection of the user on the social networking system. (For purposes of brevity, the user that follows another user is hereinafter referred to as the “following” user, and the user that is followed is hereinafter referred to as the “followed” user.) For example, a user of the social networking system may follow a celebrity on the third-party application, but not be a friend or other form of direct social connection with the celebrity on the social networking system.
In such cases, the following users would often wish to see content provided by the followed users on the third-party social networking system—e.g., textual comments, reviews, posted links, pictures, or the like—directly within the following users' accounts on the social networking system. However, the lack of a direct social connection between the following user and the followed user on the social networking system, coupled with the fact that the information provided by the followed user is within the third-party social networking system rather than the first social networking system, typically means that the social networking system will not display such information to the following user.